Revenants

Revenants, also called the Holy Ones, are the ghostly versions of creatures slain in the God Wars, and used to be amongst the most dangerous type of monsters in RuneScape. The word revenant comes from a French word meaning "returned". Before 1 February2011, Revenants could be found patrolling freely around various parts of the Wilderness, but are now found only in the Forinthry Dungeon, which is a PvP zone. Slaying at least one of every type of revenant is a requirement for one of the elite Wilderness achievements.

Revenant drops are unaffected by luck tiers, so do not bother bringing rings to increase the drop rate. There are only two ways to increase the drop rate of revenant items; completion of the elite Wilderness achievements which gives a 5% increased chance for revenant drops, and the Revenant drop enhancer, which gives 10%.

As revenants are classified as ghosts, they count towards ghost Slayer assignments. Some may also double for other tasks, depending on the revenant in question. A salve amulet and its enchanted version also work against them.

Contents

Overview

When attacking, revenants will exploit the weakness of their target. For example, if a player weak to magic attacks, they will use magic attacks. If such weaknesses cannot be exploited (such as wearing hybrid armour), the revenant will simply attack with ranged. They will also take notice of any overhead protection prayers being used; if a player is weak to magic attacks but has Protect from Magic or Deflect Magic activated, they will use melee attacks, as the player is already strong to ranged attacks. They will continue attacking with melee until the overhead prayer is deactivated, at which point they will resume attacking with magic.

Revenants are also capable of short teleportation around obstacles (e.g walls) provided that they managed to attack their target once before doing so.

Original release

The areas that revenants patrolled before being banished into the Forinthry Dungeon

Revenants were introduced in an update on 10 December2007, and were designed to replace player killers in the Wilderness. Player killers had long been a significant danger in the Wilderness, so revenants were created to provide a similar threat. Many aspects of revenants were introduced to mimic player killers more effectively, such as the ability to "eat", as well as identifying a target's weakness based on their armour and switching attacks accordingly. However, there are a number of differences between revenants and player killers, some of which have been sources of controversy on the RuneScape forums.

For example, revenants have the ability to deal damage with all three forms of combat. A skilled player killer would only use two styles, or hybrid, and they do this exceptionally well while revenants fall short in actual tactics. Revenants on the other hand, are easy to predict and counter. Their drops are also inconsistent with their power; although some revenants can drop powerful items, such as rune and dragon equipment, they do so rarely, often giving a small number of coins or nothing at all. Revenants do not fight each other, as player killers could, nor do they fight with other creatures in the Wilderness. Furthermore, whereas a player killer possesses human intelligence and can be reasoned with or otherwise placated, revenants are relentlessly aggressive and will not stop attacking until they are killed or fled from, or until they spot or are attacked by a different target.

To balance this out, revenants are limited in a number of ways. Revenants also do not have access to special attacks, cannot summon familiars, and cannot drain stats. As revenants are controlled by AI, it is possible to "trick" them by trapping them behind a wall or another obstruction. Additionally, revenants cannot run as players can, so it is arguably easier to escape from a revenant, despite the longer range of their attacks.

The range of combat levels of players that a given revenant could attack were dependent on the level of the Wilderness. In Wilderness level 1, a player must have had a combat level of one level greater than, one level less than, or equal to the combat level of the revenant in order to attack it. As the Wilderness level increased, up to level 56 Wilderness, the deepest level, lower-levelled players could be attacked by increasingly strong revenants, and vice-versa. For example, a revenant ork, with a combat level of 105, could not attack players with a combat level of 70 or lower until level 35 Wilderness.

There were a number of mechanics regarding their movement:

Unlike players, revenants could not run. They could only move at normal walking speed, meaning they can be outrun.

A revenant's teleblock spell would prevent you from teleporting for five minutes. Wearing a Forinthry bracelet allows you to teleport, bypassing their block for up to five times.

There were a few areas in the Wilderness that were not actually part of the Wilderness, and could be used as sanctuary. These included the Wilderness Volcano's banking area, Stealing Creation, Fist of Guthix, Edgeville Dungeon resource dungeon, anywhere under the Lava Maze, the Spirit Realm, the Mage Arena bank (which teleblocked players could not enter), Ghorrock, and Daemonheim. There is also a small peninsula east of the Demonic ruins that revenants can reach but players can avoid attacks by going to the far side of the peninsula. Revenants rarely get onto the peninsula. Entering any of these areas will also lift any teleblocks that may be in effect. Revenants could occasionally enter these areas, though they could not attack players nor could they be attacked.

The Protect from Missiles spell would help block their ranged attack that froze you, and, in most cases, was their strongest attack. Although Protect from Missiles does not block the freezing attacks, it does make the revenants less likely to use them.

Although revenants could reach just about every location in the Wilderness, they often followed common routes in their patrols. Learning these routes may help to avoid revenants. A picture including revenant hotspots, spawns and patrols can be found above.

Revenants made a distinctive sound when they attack with Magic, which can be easily heard if the sound effects are on.

Revenants would be scared off by Howl, the special attack of a spirit wolf.

Revenants did not appear in PvP worlds; player killers may roam the Wilderness instead.

Revenants tried to target all players, even ones it can't attack. So if the revenant is on the other side of a wall targeting you, you can send out a player with a level too low for it to attack. It would then try to target the low level player, realise it can't and go away.

Revenants could go through doors while wandering, but you could stop them from entering through the door (e.g. Chaos Temple) by quickly attacking them and closing the door before they enter.

Drop mechanics

Let G be the ghost level of a revenant, calculated by taking the square root of its combat level, resulting in a number between 1 and 12.

Divide 60,000 by G to get a number R between 5,000 and 60,000. If the player has completed the elite Wilderness achievements, reduce R by 5%. If the player has a revenant drop enhancer active, reduce R by another 10% (the lowest possible value is 4,275).

If no unique is dropped, then a final roll for coins appear, equal to 50 times R. This does not seem to be true however, as revenants drop an erratic amount of coins, though it does affect the maximum amount of coins they can drop.

History

Two players battling against a Revenant demon

During the Second Age, the Wilderness was the heart of the kingdom of the Empty Lord, Zaros. At the time, the land was prosperous and wooded, protected from his enemies by enormous military strength. However, when he was overthrown by Zamorak, the God Wars began.

The God Wars that raged across Gielinor for 4,000 years were the world's darkest hours. The races of countless civilisations were forced into extinction, and entire regions were left uninhabitable by battle. No area suffered so greatly as the Wilderness.

With Zaros removed from power, the world's other races and religious factions launched massive assaults not only on each other, but on the leaderless legions of Zaros. By the end of the God Wars, the Wilderness had suffered from so much conflict that it was permanently scarred, its former beauty forgotten.

Many of those that died in the Wars are trapped eternally in the Wilderness, due to their souls being twisted by the evil magic and corruption that surrounds it. For a very long time, over 2,000 years later, these creatures, known now as the revenants, continued to hunt for those that enter their kingdom, doing whatever they can in their power to stop them.

They were said to have guided the head mystic to a portal leading to the Primordial realm so that the mystics could construct bodies for them.

As of the late Fifth Age, the Wilderness was "reclaimed" by humans. The revenants, alongside various monsters native to the area, were forced underground into a dungeon complex. While they are significantly weakened (less numbers and losing their ability to teleblock players), they are still not to be underestimated.

Trivia

According to the head mystic, the revenants are the Holy Ones of whom the mystics spoke. It is said they sent the head mystic a message in his dreams and told him to build the camp for Stealing Creation, to make bodies for them out of sacred clay.

Revenants are unique non-boss monsters, as non-boss monsters are usually found in abundant amount of numbers. They also beat every monster in terms of variety, as there are 14 different types of Revenants.

After the Evolution of Combat, revenants maintained their RS2 healing effects. When a revenant imp reached 50 life points (100 pre-Eoc and 1500 EoC), it would heal itself by 100. This allowed revenants to be easily killed like standard monsters, as the healing effect was too low to heal over the player's damage. After a hidden update, revenants will heal when they reach below 50% of their maximum life points, and will heal a certain percentage of life points rather than the typical 100 life points.

The revenant pyrefiend, icefiend and cyclops received new sounds after a hidden update.

Prior to the Evolution of Combat, revenants maintained a low aggression range, only getting close when the player was not far from them, even behind a wall. After the update, the aggression range was drastically increased.

In addition, they will try to attack a player even if they are under the effects of a Forinthry brace, as long as the player is behind a wall. When the player moves to an area where the revenant can see them, they will become tolerant and return to their wander zones.